Last month,
I had the privilege of sitting in on the Cool Globes Business Leader Roundtable at the Kellogg School of Management's Allen Center in Evanston. Cool Globes is a public art project designed to bring artists, businesses and policymakers together to develop practical solutions to global warming. You've probably seen the more than 124 globes, designed by Chicago-area artists and underwritten by corporate sponsors, dotting downtown Chicago like their infamous bovine predecessors.
In connection with the roundtable, more than 50 CEO's and senior executives from some of Chicago's leading businesses participated in a series of panel discussions on the many ways companies can help solve the climate crisis. Executives from such global corporations as McDonald's, Philips Electronics, Mohawk Papers, Toyota, Abbott Laboratories, BP-America, and Starbucks talked about their efforts, shared ideas and challenged one another to address global warming.
Over the course of the day, I was struck by the magnitude of several separate but related forces at work in the room. On one hand, you could clearly see businesses responding to market demand, driven by the heightened environmental awareness of customers and employees. One speaker noted that according to recent consumer attitude research, social responsibility has become two times more powerful than price for producing loyalty. This is the reason Abbott Laboratories announced it was going "carbon neutral" with its U.S. Fleet of 6,500 company sales vehicles, reducing the company's total emissions by 10% over five years -- an idea inspired by its own employees. That is also why Starbucks is hosting a national day of discussion on climate change in its stores and online on August 15 -- binding its 40 million customers, employees and franchisees (not to mention investors) even closer to its socially responsible heart.
At the same time, your could see that businesses were also responding to one another, competing to demonstrate their social responsibility to their stockholders, investors and one another. Those companies having longstanding commitments to sustainable practices were particularly keen to trade on their "reputational dividend" in this area. For instance, while announcing that it was offsetting 100% of its energy use by purchasing renewable energy certificates invested in windpower, Mohawk Paper was quick to remind everyone that it had been a leader in recycled paper for more than 30 years.
The other major force to be reckoned with is regulatory, and much of the day's discussion centered around the potential for government action to become the "stick" that makes good global citizenship mandatory (vs. the "carrot" of customer loyalty and positive PR). Keynote speaker John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, decried the lack of federal action to address global warming. Noting that states and cities has moved to fill this vacuum, Podesta and other advocates called on the federal government to establish some kind of national emissions trading policy. The National Resource Defense Council pointed out that 18 states have already establish emissions caps , another 18 are considering such caps, and 600 members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors have signed a climate protection agreement that commits cities to strive to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities; urge their state governments, and the federal government, to enact greenhouse gas reduction policies and programs; and urge the U.S. Congress to establish a national emission trading systen. [Click here to view a map of the cities participating in that agreement.]
One of the more fascinating presentations was made by the Chicago Climate Exchange, a greenhouse gas registry, reduction and trading organization founded in 2000. CCX allows member businesses to make a voluntary but legally binding commitment to meet annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. Those who reduce below the targets have surplus allowances to sell or bank; those who emit above the targets comply by purchasing CCX Carbon Financial Instrument contracts.
